Account Updater FAQ

To understand Account Updater, you need to be familiar with tokens. When you have repeat customers, tokens allow you to create tokenized profiles for your clients, and securely store client information for customer management purposes or easy repeat billing. 

A customer token saves a customer’s name, shipping and billing address, contact information, and any custom fields collected by the merchant. A customer token automatically securely stores a card’s attributes, like card number, expiration date, billing zip code, and CVV. The functionality provided by tokens is commonly referred to as allowing merchants to keep cards on file.

Account Updater helps you keep tokens up to date, so that you can improve authorization success rates for your card on file and/or recurring billing program. Account Updater identifies invalid cards. When a customer has provided you their card information to keep on file, or has registered for a subscription or a payment plan, Account Updater can help you provide them a smooth checkout and billing experience for future transactions, by automatically updating their card if their card number or expiration date changes. The customer does not have to remember to contact you and provide you this information. Account Updater helps your business reduce failed transactions, and can thereby reduce customer frustration.  

To add/enable the Account Updater service, contact Small Business Sales at 855.225.9300.

To cancel the Account Updater service, please contact us at 833.344.2324.  

NOTE:
Canceling the Account Updater service will apply to future harvests only. It will not stop updates for the current month if the monthly Account Updater solutions have already started.

Account Updater runs a token harvest to update your cards on file. Token harvest automatically updates expired tokens monthly, on the harvest date that you’ve selected. 

NOTE: 
Token harvest updates American Express tokens on a daily basis. 

Account Updater also provides you downloadable reports about changes to your tokens.

For the token harvest update method, all of your stored tokens are submitted to the card brands for updates.  

Yes. All customer tokens added to a location will show in all locations.

No. The token harvest runs on schedule every month for Visa and Mastercard and daily for American Express.

If you use Bank of America Token Management or Recurring Billing to manage your cards on file, Account Updater simply updates the payment information associated with the original token, which means you can continue to use the original token. This is applicable only when you get a New Account Number or New Expiration Date response.

Your Account Updater fees will be assessed in your monthly merchant statement. Account Updater fees are assessed upon the number of updates (or matches) that are received from the card networks.  

Below are the response codes that are billed:  

• NAN (New Account Number)
• NED (New Expiration Date)
• CCH (Contact cardholder)
• ACL (Account Closed)

Yes. Find your reports under Reports > Available Reports > Third-Party Reports. See Account Updater Response Reports for more information.

In order for Account Updater to update a card on file, your customer’s card issuer must be enrolled in one of these programs:

• Visa Account Updater program
• Mastercard Automatic Billing Updater program
• American Express Cardrefresher^SM program

Most card issuers are enrolled in these programs, but some are not. Also, there are certain countries where the card networks do not support these programs. If your customer’s card issuer does not participate in one of the card network programs listed above, or is located in a country where these programs are not supported, then Account Updater will not update the customer’s card information. You will need to contact the cardholder for updated card information.